Bitterness and “The Excellent Wife”
In my last post I began an examination of some of the concerning content in the book The Excellent Wife. That particular post was about how the author portrays a wife’s fear of her husband as a sin.
In this post I will identify the ways the author uses the concept of bitterness to guilt women who are experiencing harmful behavior from their husbands.
This first image contains an overview of some quotes that give a general idea of how the subject is treated.
Keep in mind that when the author addresses the need for these women to repent for their bitterness she is not simply referring to wives whose husbands forget to put the toilet seat down.
She is including wives who have husbands who are “unfaithful”, “deceptive”, have “violent anger”, “say cruel things” and “hit her” (p. 97).
And yet somehow the wife is guilty and must repent when she feels hurt because it indicates that she is bitter – a sin supposedly more wicked than the abuse inflicted upon her.
This is a type of spiritual gaslighting and usually is more damaging than the abuse itself.
Wives in such circumstances need compassion and safety, not spiritual guilt-tripping.
What is bitterness?
What is bitterness, according to The Excellent Wife?
Bitterness is:
1. Feeling hurt
“The emotions of feeling ‘hurt’ and ‘resentful’ are usually how you feel when you are bitter” (p. 88).
Is it not a normal human emotion to feel hurt when you have been wronged, perhaps to an exceeding extent, especially at the hands of the one who has promised to love and protect you?
Emotions are not sin. They are normal human responses to life’s events. Emotions can sometimes be used an *excuse* to sin, but the feelings themselves are simply feelings, neither good nor bad. However, coming from an author whose teaching for counselors includes warning them to stay away from using “psychologized” words like personhood, abuse, dignity, and worth, it is unsurprising that she dismisses the possibility that human emotions can be morally neutral.
2. Thinking about the hurtful things done to you
“…as you think about the bad, hurtful things your husband has done you are feeding bitterness” (p. 92).
Did you know that when someone experiences trauma, their brain may repeatedly replay the event as a way to process and understand what happened? These repetitive thoughts are involuntary, and are part of the intricate design of the human body in its ability to identify threats so it may prevent similar situations from occurring in the future.
Did you know that trauma creates physical changes in parts of the brain that affect memory, emotion, and cognition? These changes can lead to persistent and intrusive thoughts about the traumatic event.
With intervention, individuals experiencing these distressing symptoms can overcome them. (And yes, those interventions can absolutely include meditating on truths from scripture! However, the fact that those repetitive thoughts occur is no indicator that someone is sinning; it’s an indicator their body and brain have experienced great distress!)
3. Possibly more wicked than the abuse that has been perpetrated
“Often the wives that I counsel are bitter. Each one’s bitterness may very well be a more wicked sin than what her husband has done…” (p. 96).
Let me be sure to mention that this author may indeed be referring to petty things, for which it would be good to encourage husbands and wives alike to be patient and forbearing with one another.
However, the types of things the author has specifically described also include abusive, traumatic events that her husband has perpetrated, such as being unfaithful and deceptive, having violent anger, saying cruel things, and hitting her (p. 97).
It is deeply concerning to me that abuse victims are very clearly being accused of sinful bitterness due to the trauma they have experienced.
Signs of Bitterness
According to The Excellent Wife, these are signs that bitterness is cropping up in a wife’s life.
1. Gossip and slander (p. 88)
The author says that by “complaining” (context: a wife seeking help from a biblical counselor), the wife is gossiping and is slandering her husband. “She has either nothing or very little that is good to say about him.”
Let’s back up a second and recall that the author includes wives in this section who have husbands who are unfaithful and deceptive, have violent anger, say cruel things, and hit her.
A woman who has a husband who does these things is married to a wicked man. The process of getting help will by necessity include disclosing some very ugly truths about him. In no way is that gossip or slander. It is simply the truth.
To shut women down and tell them their “gossip and slander” (aka speaking the truth about their husband’s wicked deeds) is evidence that they are bitter and need to repent is the height of spiritual abuse. By silencing a woman in this position, you not only prevent her from getting to safety, you also place a burden of spiritual guilt onto her that is not hers to carry.
2. Ungrateful and complaining (p. 88)
“The wife is not grateful to her husband. She murmurs to herself and complains to others about him.”
Let me share some important information about abusive people. At the root of abusive behavior is a set of deeply held beliefs that support the abuser’s mentality that they are entitled to treat the victim the way they do. One of these beliefs is the idea that “You should not have expectations for me. You should be grateful for all I do for you.” So for example, an abuser believes that his wife expecting his fidelity is “demanding” of her because, after all, he works hard to provide for her. She should be grateful he’s such a good man.
When Martha Peace teaches women that by complaining about their husbands they are being ungrateful she is feeding the entitled beliefs of the abuser. Many times complaints are legitimate, especially in the instances of infidelity and abuse that were referred to. Whatever good things the abuser does do not cancel out the legitimacy of those complaints.
3. Judges Motives (p. 88)
“Whatever he does is suspect in her eyes. Even if he does something nice she thinks his motive must be off. For example ‘he only did that to look good to his parents.’”
The thing about this is that an abuser will 100% do things purely to look good to other people.
A wife knows her husband more intimately than anyone, including a counselor who has never lived with him and experienced his betrayal and deception. Encouraging her to doubt her own knowledge and intuition is not helping her save her marriage; it is placing her in greater danger.
4. Self-centered (p. 89)
“The wife spends a lot of time thinking about herself. She is very self-absorbed. Her focus is fixed on herself and the hurts done against her.”
Where there is abuse and betrayal, a woman must always be on guard to protect herself physically and emotionally. Maybe that appears self-centered; in reality it’s simply survival.
5. Excessive sorrow (p. 89)
“It may at times overwhelm her.”
Hmm…I think a person would be a very strange human if they did not have excessive sorrow over their spouse abusing and betraying them.
6. Vengeful (p. 89)
“The wife looks for ways to avoid her husband. Perhaps she leaves when he is home, pouts, or gives him the cold shoulder. She is paying him back for what he has done to her.”
I bet abusers love the counsel that Martha Peace gives because it sounds exactly like what they say to their victims. When she doesn’t want to be around him because he has repeatedly hurt her, she is “paying him back” by staying away – how rude of her! (Sarcasm.)
Or perhaps, she doesn’t want him crawling into her bed giving her an STD, or calling her names that violate the image of God in her, or physically hurting her. This author has redefined basic English words all throughout this section, and here she’s done it yet again. Protecting one’s self is not the same thing as seeking vengeance.
7. Brooding (p. 89)
“She thinks about [what her husband has done] often and plays it over in her mind.”
I shared information above detailing that this is a trauma response. It’s not bitterness.
8. Loss of joy (p. 89)
“Because of her sin, instead of God’s peace and joy, she is experiencing intense emotional pain and misery.”
Or could it be that she is experiencing intense pain from betrayal trauma and the subsequent spiritual abuse from her counselor?
9. A Critical, Judgmental Attitude
“It is difficult for the wife to take her focus off what her husband has done wrong and focus instead on what she is doing wrong” (p. 90) She goes on to quote Matthew 7:5 about taking the beam out of one’s own eye before removing the speck from their brother’s eye.
Notice that the author says the husband has done something wrong. This is not about a misunderstanding or unrealistic expectations a wife may have. The author includes infidelity and abuse as the types of things a husband might do wrong toward his wife.
So according to the author, unless a wife responds to abuse and betrayal by searching for something to condemn herself for, she has a critical and judgemental attitude toward her husband.
Imagine for a moment that a shop owner makes a call to the police because a thief just robbed them at gunpoint. Instead of the police rightfully condemning the theft and taking steps to help the shop owner receive justice, they ask the shop owner why they are being so judgmental toward the thief. Why are they so focused on what the thief did wrong? Did they speak respectfully to the thief when he demanded their money? If they yelled at him, shouldn’t they be repenting of their own sin of unkindness? They ran cursing after the thief as he sped away? I mean, really! It sounds like they need to work on getting that log out of their eye before they’re concerned with what someone else did wrong to them.
Isn’t that ridiculous? If the shop owner is a believer, and if they exhibited behaviors they do not believe align with the heart of Jesus, then of course they should deal with that between them and God. However, whatever imperfections they may have displayed, that does not make them critical and judgmental of the thief because they reported him. It doesn’t mean they have no right to focus on the theft and on receiving repayment of the stolen money.
Martha Peace says that if a woman’s husband hurts her, she is supposed to think about what percentage of the problems in the marriage are her fault. If she is guilty for 40% and her husband is guilty of 60%, she is supposed to take responsibility for 100% of her 40%. She says this is what Jesus meant by taking the beam out of one’s own eye (p. 90-91)
But abuse is not a mutual problem in the marriage for which each partner must take responsibility. Abuse is like the shop owner being robbed at gunpoint. The victim of domestic abuse is robbed of her dignity, her time, her health, and her bodily autonomy. The weapon of choice varies by abuser. Intimidation and threats are sufficient for some; others advance to fists, objects, and firearms. Like the shop owner cursing the thief, the victim reacts in ways she might later not be proud of. She has imperfections like every human, but those imperfections are not remotely the same as robbing another person with a weapon.
According to Mrs. Peace, though, a wife whose husband is hurting her is supposed to pray the prayer from Psalm 139:23-24 for God to search her heart (p. 92).
I am all for reminding ourselves that God knows our hearts and for asking him to show us anything that is not aligned with the heart of Jesus. But maybe, just maybe, when a woman’s husband is robbing her using weapons of his choice, that is not the time to do it.
Perhaps if the author wants to point women to the Psalms, she could point them to Psalms of deliverance and comfort instead of using the Bible as a weapon to shame victims.
Note: are there instances where a wife could do some of these things and they would be wrong? Yes. But it’s important to consider the context. This book is written to help wives experiencing an entire array of distressing circumstances, including infidelity and abuse. While it’s appropriate to encourage a wife with a loving husband to refrain from genuinely unkind responses to his small imperfections, it’s spiritually abusive to treat every woman as if that’s the case and that SHE is the problem for being such a whiny, ungrateful wife.
The Effects of Bitterness
The following are what Martha Peace says will happen when a wife is bitter. (Keep in mind the twisted definition of bitterness the author uses.)
1. Your sin will multiply.
“In addition to the bitterness you may begin to think sinful thoughts as well as express anger, wrath, clamor, and possibly malice (Ephesians 4:31). At this point your husband will be unable to do anything right in your eyes even if he is trying” (p. 92).
While it is entirely possible for someone to have an attitude of anger or malice toward their spouse, and it is appropriate to label that as sinful and call for repentance in such cases, somehow things have gotten turned around backward here.
The attention is turned away from the husband who actually treated his wife with anger and malice, doing such things as displaying violent anger, saying cruel things, and hitting her , and now it is somehow the wife who is told she is in spiritual danger for thinking sinful thoughts.
Instead of insinuating that a wife is full of malice because her husband is “unable to do anything right” in her eyes, perhaps a better wording here would be something like this: “At this point you have finally faced the difficult truth that these behaviors of your husbands are abusive. Up until now you have focused on the good times and tried to believe the best about him, but now that you have squarely acknowledged the patterns of abuse perpetrated toward you, it is understandably extremely painful.”
2. Your sin will spread to others (p. 92).
The author quotes Hebrews 12:15, which cautions believers to beware of the root of bitterness which can defile others.
The best teaching I’ve ever heard on this is from Rebecca Davis where she explains clearly that the “root of bitterness” is not at all what you’ve been told it is. I strongly suggest you watch the whole thing, but the gist is that bitterness can refer to being poisoned (such as by abuse), and also to the one who is doing the poisoning. Only one of these is sinful and only one infects others.
3. Bitterness will hurt your children (p. 93).
If we’re talking about the type of bitterness that poisons others (such as by abusing them), then bitterness will indeed hurt your children.
But that is not what the author is referring to. The author is talking about the painful thoughts that the one who is experiencing the abuse is experiencing. As painful as it is for a wife to face the truth when her husband has been abusive or unfaithful, being courageous enough to do so may be the catalyst that will protect her children from the harm of witnessing domestic violence in their home.
There is much research available about the effects of domestic violence and coercive control on the children who live in the home, and none of those effects are good.
Let’s not blame the parent experiencing the painfulness of abuse and betrayal for hurting their children. Instead, let’s applaud their courage to live the truth no matter how hard it is.
Response to Bitterness
In this final section I will share what the author says wives who find themselves bitter must do.
1. Repent.
“You repent by asking God’s forgiveness and your husband’s forgiveness” (p. 93).
Keep in mind that there has not been bad behavior or hateful words on the part of the wife. The “sin” here is the fact that she feels pain and can’t stop thinking about her husband’s mistreatment of her.
You don’t need to ask forgiveness for being hurt by something someone else did to you.
2. Make “second mile investments” by doing something extra special for your husband.
“Do something he would really like, such as prepare his favorite meal or rub his back or buy him a gift and wrap it up in pretty paper…The more intense your hurt, the greater the need to give him blessings instead. Eventually your emotional pain will abate…” (p. 93).
All of the women I’ve spoken to would beg to differ. No, returning evil for evil is never the answer, but a woman’s pain of abuse and betrayal will not be lessened by making her husband’s favorite meal.
Besides, how can a wife go the extra mile in her marriage when her marriage is one-sided to begin with? She’s the one putting forth all the effort in spite of the mistreatment she receives from her husband. Every day she tries a little harder, hoping it will be enough not to make him angry. And every day, it’s not enough to stop the abuse. That’s because her husband’s choices have nothing to do with how much “extra” she does and everything to do with the fact that he chooses to act that way.
3. Think “kind, forgiving thoughts”
The author provides a chart contrasting what she says are bitter thoughts with what she says are kind and forgiving thoughts. Most of the “bitter thoughts” are simply the truth and the “kind, forgiving thoughts” are a victim’s gaslighting herself that the abuse isn’t really so bad.
For example:
Bitter thought: “He’s only thinking of himself.”
Kind, forgiving thought: “Maybe he doesn’t feel well today.”
She tells wives to keep a log of every time they think one of these sinful, bitter thoughts and to convert it to a kind and forgiving thought. Then they are to destroy the log so that no one will be hurt if they came up on the list. (Note: journaling is one of the most sure-fire ways for a wife in a destructive marriage to gain clarity about what is happening. Recording abusive incidents will help her identify patterns and realize that although she’s been trying to tell herself it’s not so bad, yes it is. No doubt this journal will include a myriad of “bitter” thoughts. To destroy it will destroy the clarity she needs.)
4. Forgive, but don’t necessarily trust
I agree with this premise. If someone has hurt us, we can forgive in the sense of not seeking to hurt the other person in return. Forgiveness does not, however, require trusting that person not to hurt us again, especially if they’ve demonstrated a pattern of doing so.
However, because the author seems to hold to the belief of no divorce for any reason, she is forced to contradict herself.
She says, “…Realize that forgiveness and trust are not the same thing. There are some circumstances in which you would be naive to trust your husband…However, you must still forgive and work toward reconciliation. Then as your husband is more and more faithful, your trust in him will increase” (p. 97).
The problem here is that in a circumstance where it would be naive for a woman to trust her husband, it is unlikely that he will become “more and more faithful.” Instead she will probably become more and more unsafe. There is absolutely nothing about forgiveness that requires a woman to remain married to a man who has proven that it would be foolish to trust him.
Authors who truly wish to help women in these circumstances would do well to diligently study what the Bible teaches about divorce so that they do not pressure women in unsafe marriages to remain tethered to their abusers.
